The Frontier Cutting Edge images

Hubble Space Telescope Captures First Direct Image of a Star This is the first direct image of a star other than the Sun. Called Alpha Orionis, or Betelgeuse, the star is a red super giant, a Sun-like star nearing the end of its life. The Hubble picture reveals a huge ultraviolet atmosphere with a mysterious hot spot on the stellar behemoth's surface. The enormous bright spot, more than 10 times the diameter of Earth, is at least 2,000 degrees Kelvin hotter than the star's surface The Frontier Cutting Edge images

The Spitzer Space Telescope has pierced thick cosmic dust to reveal this embedded protostar, or embryonic star, in HH46-IR The Frontier Cutting Edge images

This Spitzer Space Telescope image shows, in its entirety, a disc of planet-forming debris encircling a nearby star called Fomalhaut. The Frontier Cutting Edge images

The Frontier Cutting Edge images

Signs of water found on distant planets Water has been detected in region around Upsilon Andromedae Tantalising signs of water have been found in the atmospheres of planets orbiting distant stars. If the discovery is confirmed, it will fuel speculation that the Galaxy is teeming with life. "This would be a historic discovery - the first detection of a prebiotic molecule in an extrasolar planet," says Cristiano Cosmovici of the Institute for Cosmic and Planetary Sciences in Rome, whose team made the discovery. Cosmovici has looked for water near 17 stars, all of which are thought to have planetary systems or cometary clouds. His team used the 32-metre Medicina radio telescope near Bologna to look for water "maser" emissions. These are telltale microwaves that might come from water in a planet's atmosphere when it is bathed in the infrared light of its star. Three of the planetary systems are producing these emissions, Cosmovici told the Second European Workshop on Exo/Astrobiology in Austria this week. "This result is astonishing if it's true," says Geoff Marcy, a leading planet hunter from the University of California at Berkeley.

One of the planetary systems orbits the star Upsilon Andromedae, about 50 light years away. There are three planets in this system, with minimum masses of about 0.7, 2.1 and 4.6 times the mass of Jupiter. They are all gas giants like Jupiter, although it is possible that the system could also contain undetected rocky planets like Earth. There are also signs of water near two much closer stars: Epsilon Eridani, a Sun-like star 10 light years away, and Lalande 21185, a red dwarf about 8 light years away. Between them they may have three planets with a similar mass to Jupiter, but the evidence is weaker than for Upsilon Andromedae's planets. Although having water does not necessarily make a planet habitable, the result would at least show that one of the key chemicals for life is common on alien worlds. "Water's at the top of the shopping list of ingredients for life," says Hugh Jones of Liverpool John Moores University, whose team announced a new Jupiter-mass planet this week. "This is a very exciting first step."